John Phillips: The Perils of Cross-Country Trips

He rolled his truck into a brush fire raging along the berm. It was like a Chitwood audition.

Last month, I drove our website’s long-term Kia Sportage SX AWD from Darby, Montana, to editorial world headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There I swapped it for our long-term Mazda CX-5, which I immediately drove back to Darby—a round trip of almost 4000 miles. In five days. The urgency derived from blizzards predicted to descend the following week. Trust me, you don’t know terror until the Wyoming Highway Patrol closes Interstate 90 at the snowbound Buffalo exit, where all cars and trucks are diverted into town. At which point, your choice of accommodations dwindles to (a) an L.L.Bean sleeping bag on the left side of the Kia’s cargo bay, or (b) an L.L.Bean sleeping bag on the right side of the Mazda’s cargo bay. I know, because it was in like fashion that I’ve spent numb evenings in a Nissan Frontier, a Mercedes-Benz ML500, and a Mercury Tracer with mismatched front seats. (You think manufacturers pore over press-fleet cars before delivering them to us?)

I’ve driven cross-country at least once every year since 1975. Four times in 2012. It’s because of a personal rule: If it takes only 2.5 days to reach my destination via automobile, that easily trumps four hours riding the fetid petri dish that is the aluminum sky sausage. I’ve worked out a routine for these treks. In a kind of C-shape—comprising the passenger seat, center console, IP ledges, and all available inner-door nooks—I array the bare necessities: Visine, cashews, Pringles, trail mix, jerky, vitamins, Lipton iced tea, Lysol wipes, credit cards, breath mints, cheese curds, generic stimulants, coins, notepad, and, in the old days, Swisher Sweets. You cannot believe the sleep-inhibiting properties of a lit cigar that topples into your groinal region.

I indulge in time-passers. For instance, I’ll hit the seek button on the AM dial once, then force myself to listen to whatever materializes until it fades. In that fashion, I have learned more than is absolutely necessary about Garth Brooks’s contributions to Kiss My Ass. I have also been enriched by hearing Adam’s Market trumpet its motto: “In meat we lead, others follow.”

I make lists, too, starting with my still-incomplete Personal Failings list originally conceived by an ex-wife. And it was along I-39 in Illinois that, while towing an A-Production Corvette to Elkhart Lake, I flat-out memorized a 50-item list of parts I’d need the next week at Mosport, along with several stanzas of Howl. The mind is a wonderful thing to waste.

I jot down stuff I see on billboards, too. I’ll spare you my lifetime collection, but on this trip alone I spied a South Dakota ad for “Sloonshine” and a sign that, before it was vandalized, read “Abortion stops a beating heart” but now reads “Abortion stops a beating.” Then there’s the “Busted Nut Bar and Grill” plus “10 TON TREE” and “6 TON PRAIRIE DOG.” Everyone’s favorite, however, is “Dick’s 24-Hour Toe Service,” demonstrating Dick’s dedication to pedi­curial endurance. On I-90 in Wisconsin (exit 70), a sign says: “Cheese Diesel Liquor Bait”—the four food groups. At exit 209 there’s an ad for an adult-video store—“XXXit 209,” ha, ha. But the winner is the billboard for a Chicago “gentlemen’s club” whose copywriter should garner awards for his spare-but-purposeful use of the language. It reads: “All of the liquor. None of the clothes. All of the time.”

I’ve noticed that, east of the Mississippi, the drivers begin displaying sloth and aggression, an unhappy pairing. Lane discipline devolves, and I become John Belushi in one of his slow-burn skits. A woman on her phone in a gold Honda Odyssey blocked the left lane north of Madison for 18 minutes—I had the stopwatch on her. When the infuriated assemblage of followers was mercifully afforded passage, she gave each of us the finger, possibly as payback for interrupting her call to Dick’s Toe Service. As David E. Davis Jr. used to say, “If she were to catch fire right now, I might spill my drink on her but not beyond the olives.”

But that’s nothing. Last summer, I got caught behind a Ford F-150 whose driver was performing what my ex-neighbor the cop calls the “Smirnoff Samba.” I was afraid to pass as he explored the many wonders of all available lanes. It took maybe 10 miles—this was just south of Sheridan, Wyoming—until he lost control (assuming he had any left to lose) and rolled his truck directly into a brush fire raging along the berm. It was like a Chitwood audition. Can you even get stuff like that on reality TV?

Long-distance driving is like watching the Twilight Zone marathon on New Year’s Day. Not a lot of concentration is involved. There’s time for modest introspection, trivial generalization, and pedantic bloviation. In Michigan, for example, I passed a trio of primer-gray Porsche Cayennes sporting CNG logos above their filler flaps. That was good for a full hour of contemplation.

Note to Mr. Festival of Tattoos at the beef-jerky counter in Worthington, Minnesota: You know the tat across your neck that bears the legend “Have faith, gain a religion. Have doubt, gain an education”? Dude, you—well, your neck, anyway—are now in my lifetime list of billboards.